OK here is the scenario....Street Samurai (Agility 6 Gunnery 6) fires a missile at Ganger...

According to rules He would roll (Just His Gunnery Skill right?) Gunnery + Missile Sensor Rating -3 (because Metahumans have signature of -3)

Street Samurai is using Aztechnology Striker w/ High Explosive Missile (Sensor Rating 6) So Samurai would roll 9 dice. If he gets 4 Net Hits, the Scatter would be reduced by 4D6 meters – 1 per net hit (– Sensor rating) by 24?..(net hits X sensor??)

Rocket Scatter seems like it should be a lot lower?...You can get 8 Net Successes and if you roll 6s on the scatter, the rocket can scatter 16 meters off target, and even with a Frag Rocket with -1/m Blast wouldn't hurt target...With EIGHT NET successes...Does anyone have any house rules on this? Maybe lowering the Scatter by 3 per net hit.

First problem - missiles are Heavy Weapons. The Street Samurai would not be using Gunnery unless the launcher was attached to a vehicle or drone. In this case, it would be his Heavy Weapons + the Sensor of the missile. Interestingly, the Signature Table only applies to firing a weapon using Passive Targetting with that weapon attached to a vehicle, which you are not doing. Logically, it should also apply here, so you can either: 1) Go RAW and don't take a penalty, or 2) Go RAI, and take the penalty.

If you roll max for scatter, it moves off 12 meters (2d6). If you get 8 successes, and have a 6 sensor, you reduce it to 0.

EDIT: The only other time by RAW that you use the Signature Table is when you fire a missile at a vehicle, which would actually grant you a bonus, unless the vehicle is electric.

See

There are some similarities between size modifiers and signature.

There was an extensive discussion about scatter in this thread last week. You might look there for ideas, but the consensus was that the scatter rules are silly.

You know, I said it in the other post and I will say it here... I have never really had any issues with the Scatter rules in SR4A... they can be compensated for fairly easily...

Maybe not accurate to real life, but who cares?

Keep the Faith

Actually... missiles aren't like that, their onboard sensors are a bonus to the roll I believe. Not a replacement.

You would roll VEHICLE SENSORS + Gunnery + Missile sensor.
If it was a rocket you'd roll Vehicle Sensor + Gunnery.

You could get more bonus dice from active targetting and a lock-on.


As a street sam... he'd be using Agility + Heavy Weapons + (sensor if missile).
Other mods such as smartlink etc... of course as well.


And yes the current scatter rules for grenades and missiles are completely bolloxed.
I recommend, just starting w/ 2d6, then adding 1d6 per range category... -1d6 for airburst or something similar.

Never had any problems with the scatter rules for grenades, but we never fired any rockets or missiles in our games though, but I saw that thread too and I can understand people's issue with it (at least for rockets and missiles).

Its not in the changelog document, but the Scatter rules were changed between 4th and 4th anniversary. I believe they basically doubled the scatter for all explosive - leading to our current predicament of 'scatter is stupid' - and got rid of the 'aim at a point in space' rules.

Short version: ask your gaming buddies to hand over their copy of the old rulebook, and use the rules out of there.

Heck, i've been meaning to compare them myself, but I don't own the old book. If someone could post em here, i'd be much obliged.

Someone who wants to be able to hit something with a rocket without having to resort of 2070s futuretech when such a thing has been a trivial exercise since the 1940s, maybe?

Again... that "Future Tech" you are touting has been around for a great many years... so I think that it is a moot point in that regard... And I have said that it is not Accurate to real life... It is a Game, not real life...

The change was put in place to provide greater survivability (at the expense of reality)... there are some (like you) that disagree with that sentiment, but as I said before, itr can be compensated for fairly cheaply, so it is not really all that big of a deal...

Keep the Faith

Anybody happen to catch the AP story about the 12 civilians killed in a rocket snafu in Afganistan this weekend? The 2 rockets that hit the civilian house missed thier target by *600 meters*. Somebody must have seriously glitched on their heavy weapons roll...

I have not heard that story and would be interested in reading it. I suspect that a number of things happened, such as bad targeting data, faulty hardware (guidance system), etc. etc. leading to catastrophic failure to impact in the correct location.

Remember: in the real world, when things fail they fail spectacularly (see: Chernobyl). In ShadowRun failure is more common, but limited in scope (even if that means that missiles are on average useless, they're not streaking across the whole city when shit hits the fan, which is realistically possible if you miss a target and the rocket shoots up over the top by a large enough margin as to miss the nearest building).

Hey everybody! First time poster here (even though I browsed the forum before to look for interesting ideas).

Okay, so I've only skimmed over the rocket and missile parts of SR4A before, but never read the rules in detail. The weapons just haven't been used in my game, so far. However, I always intended to run a scenario where their use would be appropriate, so I finally sat down and gave them a closer look. I'm not sure if I got everything right, because some of the numbers look really off to me.

Basically, the scenario that's about to come up takes place in some rundown barrens/urban warzone and involves the armored ride of a police force coming under fire from some (relatively) well equipped insurgents. Nothing fancy, however, so I decided to give them a handful of disposable LAW from Arsenal, used by people who have received some training in their use.
They have average stats (AGI 3, Skill 3) and plan to ambush the vehicles while parked. Now, firing from short range at a stationary target without any penalties and a pool of 6 dice will give them 2 hits on average. However, they way I read the scatter rules, I have to roll (4D6 - hits) in any case. Uhm, how are they supposed to hit at all?

On average, I'd have to roll 10+ hits to even have a chance to cancel out the scatter generated by 4D6. Even with incredible luck and rolling only ones, the shooter would still need at least 4 hits. I must be missing something in the rules, because a shot like this is not just unlikely, it's bascially impossible.

I know that better gear can improve the chances, but that can't be the solution, can it? This is not a challenging shot, so a basic military grunt should be able to fire a LAW at a parked APC within short range with at least some chance of success.

Yes, the shot is impossible. Honestly? Scatter should only be used for grenades. Missiles aren't that uncontrollable by default (they have guidance systems) and rockets are supposed to fly straight. Just my two on the matter.

Oh well, just what I feared. Off to the house rule mobile then. I get that such weapons are potentially very deadly, but I think there are other ways to reduce their lethality for characters without making rockets outright impossible to use.

I'll probably end up modifying the scatter rules so they only apply for missed shots or glitches, and also take into the account the likely result of the warhead flying above or past the sides of the target. I thought about also removing the AP value of anti-vehicle rockets and missiles if they don't hit their target, because such weapons usually rely on a shaped charge and a special penetrator to defeat armor, which requires a solid hit.

Face it, the rules for explosives have NOTHING to do with real life (want some oxidizer for your explosives? ), obviously the rules for delivery systems had to follow suit for consistency reasons...

I see your rules stupidity and I raise it even more rules stupidity. I like the theory, game design at its finest.